


Hallelujah/Far Too Young To Die

by hollowbirds (torturousthings)



Series: Written About You [8]
Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M, Ryden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 05:26:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8736532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torturousthings/pseuds/hollowbirds
Summary: Late nights on YouTube aren't always a good idea when your former bandmate is taking over the internet. Especially when said bandmate is, well, Brendon Urie.





	

I hold my breath as the page loads. I told myself I wouldn’t be nervous, and yet. It’s stupid, really. Why would the fact that my former bandmate is releasing a new album concern me in any way? The big title appears on my screen, announcing that Panic! at the Disco is releasing new stuff, along with a link to some video. Before really thinking about it, my cursor is on it and my finger presses down, opening the link. 

 

It takes me to Youtube, the title of the video announcing Hallelujah. I scoff. Been done before, Brendon. Plus, he isn’t religious, as far as I remember. The song kicks off, and my eyes focus. He looks good, leather jacket and white shirt, smirking at that girl. Age suits him, I realise. He looks more mature, wiser, and that takes me right back to that hotel room where I told him we couldn’t do it anymore. He’d had this look in his eyes, like he’d seen thousands of years go by, weariness and sadness beyond time. But it had to stop. We couldn’t carry on like that.

 

The video keeps playing, and his voice kicks in. A shiver travels down my spine. I haven’t heard his music in such a long time, but his voice hasn’t changed. He knows how to use it, and does. Always has.

 

Another shot now, he’s in a red suit. Not exactly like the one he was wearing for when we filmed Sins, but there definitely is a reference to that. I know it. This one is more clean-cut, more professional, and yet he manages to look incredibly good. 

 

Oh God, his lips. I feel like somehow, he knew I was going to watch this one. Knew that this very shot would leave me speechless, and told the director to keep it in at any cost. Bastard, still playing with me ten years later. I try to remember how he tasted, how his head tilted so that his lips met mine, in that shitty hotel room in Cape Town but I can’t. I pause the video. It’s been too long, so long, but what I do recall is how cold his tears were on my lips. The timelessness of his pupils had given way to a flood, dripping down his cheeks as he stepped forward and stopped right in front of me, asking for permission. One last time. He understood, but I didn’t. He knew why we had to stop being an _us,_ why this wasn’t going to work out. I believed it could, and yet my pride forced me to break up first. To tell him what he already knew. What he believed, and what he thought I believed. I didn’t step back, though. Granting him permission. Or granting me permission, I’m not sure. I needed it more than him. 

 

The song picks up exactly where I stopped it when I press the space bar. Back to the nonsensical architecture, and he’s still a terrible actor. He never knew how to lie, how to pretend everything was fine, but somehow I never managed to truly see through him either. 

 

Both sides of a confessional now. Does that mean he’s admitting things to himself? I’m not sure, and try to focus on the lyrics. God, he looks gorgeous. 

 

Wait. 

 

His face isn’t in the shot when he says that line, but my heart constricts all the same. He just referenced one of my songs, didn’t he? 

 

I pause the video once again, and stare at the frozen screen.

 

Something that greatly resembles anger starts pooling in my gut. How dare he? It’s been so long, so long, almost an agonising wait and now he’s answering me, six years later. In a single. I know I’ve written a few songs that were pretty blatantly about him, about us, but I never would’ve put them out as a single. He did. What we had wasn’t for everyone to see, never has been, and yet there it is, that line he speaks again and again like he means it. Like he wants me to know. I’m not sure what to think as I let the song play on, staring mindlessly at the dark-lipped girl and at him. 

 

I try to remember what he was like onstage. The way he’d always steal the spotlight. Actually, he didn't steal it. Everyone gave it to him willingly, knowing he deserved the attention and the fuss. He did. 

 

He’s never been shy like I used to think he was. He’d been so discrete, when I first met him, beautiful brown eyes and dark hair, standing in the basement where we had set up our gear. Stand-in for our missing guitarist, he was. But his backup vocals were better than my lead ones ever were, and they cut right through me. Him singing bits and pieces of the songs wasn’t enough. That’s when I realised he wasn’t shy, that his voice was far more confident than mine. So I chose to hide behind it, dress up my words with his voice. Not to pretend they weren’t mine, but to see how I really wanted them to sound. Confident. It worked; we pulled it off. The kids loved the record. I think I’ve seen it described as an emo classical album or some bullshit like that. Over ten years later, still. I scoff. Ridiculous, really. We never aimed for that. 

 

I glance to the column on the right side of the screen. Under “Up Next”, an artwork that I’ve only glanced at before. It’s him, in black and white, colourful smoke rising above his head. Las Vegas stretches out behind him. He always loved that city, though I never figured out why. I associate it with him too much now, so I stay in LA. Not the other side of the world, but three hours away seems to do the trick. 

 

I don’t have the heart to close the page as it reloads, and I read the song’s title. Far Too Young To Die, it says. I like the intro, simple but somehow tinged with sadness, or nostalgia, I’m not sure. His voice again, this time layered with editing. It’s unusual. I’m used to hearing clean vocals, the edge to his voice, the roughness he can give to it if he wants to. It sounds good, though, like he’s discovered something new, evolved with the music. I like this track. 

 

The chorus hits me in a different way than that line in Hallelujah, a memory stirring in my mind, surfacing again after all these years. I heard he’s married now, know he’s happy, but there is no way to erase the past. Maybe he chooses to ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen, like I did. Used to do. 

 

I see him, sitting alone in a nearly empty coffee shop, staring out the fogged up window. I see the scarf hanging loosely around his neck and the coat discarded on the back of his chair. I see his eyes, lighting up as he takes me in, acknowledging my presence like I didn’t say I’d show up. And I remember. 

 

I remember his smile as we walked out, not linking hands until the darkness made it difficult to see, remember the taste of his lips that evening, coffee and snowflakes and something else that I can’t really remember. Him. 

 

But, most of all, I remember the disbelief and relief in his tone as he simply said, “I didn’t think you’d show up tonight.” No accusation, and yet my guts twisted. I still don’t know why he thought I wouldn’t. But I remember, and so does he. 

 

That thought is like a punch to the guts, realisation that he must’ve written this song that night, when I was asleep next to him, and waited all these years to finally put it out. So that it didn’t hurt anymore. 

 

There are two kinds of songs: the ones you write for others to see, and the ones you write for yourself. I’m sure this one was meant to stay hidden beneath the other pages of lyrics, and yet he chose to record it and put it on the album. Maybe it was cathartic for him, a way to finally push me out of his head. I don’t know. I close my eyes and shut my laptop. That’s enough for tonight. 


End file.
